I MAKE A DESCENT.
If it had many a time occurred to me, since first I heard of the jar
of coins, that the secret of their concealment was connected somehow
within the room of silence, it must have done so from that old
association of my father with a place that the rest of us so dreaded
and avoided. The scorn of superstitious terror that he showed in his
choice; the certainty that none would dream of looking there; the
encouragement his own mysterious actions gave to the sense of a
haunting atmosphere that seemed ever to hang about the neighborhood of
the room--these were all so many justifications of the wisdom of his
choice. Now I understood the secret of that everlasting lubrication;
for had anything happened, when he might chance to be absent, to choke
or damage the structure of the ancient wheel, the stoppage or ruin
ensuing might have laid bare the hiding-place to any curious eye; for,
as part of his general policy, I conclude, no veto except the natural
one of dread was ever laid on our entering the room itself if we
wished to.
“Well,” I said, stifling a sigh that in itself would have seemed a
breach of confidence, “when am I to do my first oiling, father?”
“It wasn’t touched yesterday, Renalt. From the first I have not failed
to do it once, at least, in the twenty-four hours.”
“You would like me to go now--at once?”
“Ah! If you will.”
“Very well.”
As I was leaving the room he called me back.
“There’s the oil can in yonder cupboard and a bull’s-eye lantern fixed
in a belt. You will want to light that and strap it round you.”
I went and fetched them, and, holding them in my hand, asked him if
there was anything more.
“No,” he said; “be careful not to let go the rope; that’s all.”
“Why do you want me to go down, dad? Let me just do the oiling and
come away.”
“No, now--now,” he said, with feverish impatience. “The murder’s out
and my conscience quit of it. You’ll satisfy me with a report of its
safety, Renalt? There’s a brave fellow. It would be a sore thing to
compose myself here to face the end, and not know but that something
had happened to your inheritance.”
My spirit groaned, but I said to him, very well; I would go.
He called to me once more, and I noticed an odd repression in his
voice.
“Assure yourself, and me, of the safety of the jar. Nothing else. If
by chance you notice aught beyond, keep the knowledge of it locked in
your breast--never mention it or refer to it in any way.”
Full of dull foreboding of some dread discovery, I left him and went
slowly down the stairs.
I paused outside the ominous door, with a thought that a little
whisper of laughter had reached my ears from its inner side. Then,
muttering abuse on myself, for my cowardice, I pushed resolutely at
the cumbrous oak and swung it open.
A cold, vault-like breath of air sighed out on me, and the marrow in
my bones was conscious of a little chill and shiver. But I strode
across the floor without further hesitation and fetched from my pocket
the iron key. The hole it fitted into was near the edge of the great
box that inclosed the wheel. Standing there in close proximity to the
latter, I was struck by the subdued character of the flapping and
washing sounds within. Heard at a distance, they seemed to shake the
whole building with their muffled thunder. Here no formidable uproar
greeted me; and so it was, I conclude, from the concentration of noise
monopolizing my every sense.
I put in the key, swung open the door--and there before me was a
section of a huge disk going round overwhelmingly, and all splashed
and dripping as it revolved, with great jets of weedy-smelling water.
I say “disk,” for the arms to this side had been boarded in, that
none, I supposed, might gather hint of what lay beyond.
The eyes into which the shaft ends of the wheel fitted were sunk in
the floor level, flush with the lintel of the cupboard door that lay
furthest from the window; so that only the left upper quarter of the
slowly spinning monster was visible to me.
It turned in an oblong pit, it seemed, wooden in its upper part, but
going down into a narrow gully of brick, at the bottom of which the
race boomed and roared with a black sound of fury.
If the hollow thunder of the unseen torrent had been dismal to hear,
the sight of it boiling down there in its restricted channel was awful
indeed. From the forward tunnel through which it escaped into the tail
bay, a thin streak of light tinged the plunging foam of it with green
phosphorescence and made manifest the terror of its depths.
For all my dread of the place, a strange curiosity had begun to usurp
in me the first instincts of repulsion. Though I had been in the room
some minutes, no malignant influence had crept over me as yet, and a
hope entered me that by thus forcing myself to outface the fear I had
perhaps triumphed over its fateful fascination.
Leaving the door of the cupboard open, I hurried from the room, and so
to the rear of the building and the platform outside, where the heads
of the sluices were that regulated the water flow. Here, removing the
pin, I dropped the race hatch and so cut off the stream from the
wheel.
Returning, I left open the door of the room that the wholesome
atmosphere outside should neighbor me, at least, and means of escape,
if necessary, readily offer themselves; and, lighting the lantern in
the belt, strapped the latter round my waist.
When I came to the cupboard again the boom of water below had subsided
to a mouthing murmur, and the spin of the wheel was lazily relaxed, so
that before it had turned half its own circumference it stood still
and dripping. The sight when I looked down now was not near so
formidable, for only a band of water slid beneath me as I bent over.
Still, my heart was up in my mouth for all that, now the moment had
come for the essaying of my task.
Oiling such parts of the machine as were within reach, I next grasped
the rope, which I had at the first noticed hanging from the darkness
above down into the pit, just clear of the blades, and set to peering
for the broader float my father had mentioned. Luckily, the last
motion of the wheel had brought this very section opposite me, so that
I had no difficulty in slipping in the rope and securing it by means
of the button underneath.
Then, with a tingling of the flesh of my thighs and a mental prayer
for early deliverance, I stepped upon the blade, with a foot on either
side of the rope to which I clung grimly, and in a moment felt myself
going down into blackness.
The wheel turned gently under my weight, giving forth no creak or
scream; and the dark water below seemed to rise at me rather than to
wait my sinking toward it. But though the drip and slime of the pit
shut me in, there was action in all I was doing so matter-of-fact as
to half-cure me for the moment of superstitious terror.
Suddenly the wheel stopped with a little jerk and thud of the float on
which I stood against a bend in the tackle that passed through it.
Holding on thus--and, indeed, the tension necessary to the act spoke
volumes for my father’s vigor of endurance--the light from the lantern
flashed and glowed about the interior structure of the wheel before
me. Then, looking between the blades--for the periphery of the great
circle was not boxed in--I saw revealed to me in a moment the secret I
had come to investigate. For, firmly set in a hole dug in the brick
side of the chasm at a point so chosen within the sweep of the wheel
that no spoke traversed it when it lay motionless, and at arm’s reach
only from one standing on the paddle, was a vessel of ancient pottery
about a foot in height, and so smeared and dank with slime as that a
careless grasp on its rim might have sent the whole treasure
clattering and raining through the wheel into the water below.
Cautiously I put out a hand, grasped and gently shook the jar. A dull
jingle came from it, and so my task was accomplished.
By this time, however, I was so confident of my position that I got
out the oil can and began to lubricate deliberately the further shaft
end of the wheel. While I was in the very act, a metallic glint,
struck by the lantern light from some object pinned on to the huge hub
that crossed the channel almost directly in front of my line of
vision, caught my eye and drove me to pause. I craned my neck to get a
nearer view, and gave so great a start of wonder as to lose my hold of
the oiler, which fell with clink and splash into the water underfoot.
Nailed to the great axle was something that looked like the miniature
portrait of a man; but it was so stained and flaked by years of dark
decay that the features were almost obliterated. The face had been
painted in enamel on an oval of fluxed copper; yet even this had not
been able to resist the long corrosion of the atmosphere in which it
was held prisoner.
I could make out only that the portrait was that of a young man of
fair complexion, thin, light-haired and dressed in the fashion of a
bygone generation. More I had not time to observe; for, as I gazed,
suddenly with a falling sway and a flicker the lantern at my waist
went out.